


When the World Is Running Down

by Lady_Ganesh



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Community: saiyuki_wk_au, F/F, Other, drag kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:15:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Ganesh/pseuds/Lady_Ganesh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were drag kings before the end of the world; they're still drag kings now. But life is hardly the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the World Is Running Down

**Author's Note:**

> andmydog looked this over for me (and I am so grateful!) but any remaining mistakes are mine.
> 
> There is a brief mention of suicide.

You're gonna laugh, but I was in drag when the apocalypse started.

No, really, no shit.

I was Bruce Lee that night, had the jumpsuit and everything. I don't usually do characters, but it was the night before Halloween, and shit, Bruce Lee. My girlfriend - that's Tom Tequila - was Chow Yun-Fat, so we kind of had the whole Hong Kong thing going. We were gonna do a skit about whose dick was bigger, and then Sonny was gonna jump in as Jackie Chan and have the biggest dick of anybody. We had the dildos and everything, it was gonna be awesome.

We had four Asian kings in the crew and we're all still here: Me, Tom, Sonny and T. We're all cis, because I know you're gonna ask that next. We're not taking testosterone, and I'm the only bisexual one. You ask anything more personal than that, I don't care if you're a girl, you're gonna get punched.

....I mean, unless you wanna inspect me up close and personal. I don't mind that so much. I'm Shannon, out of drag. T's named Triana, if you can believe that. Tom's Octavia - I know, right? And Sonny's just Sonny. She spells it with a "u" when she's a girl.

T was the top king, always. His drag dad founded the crew, and he was fucking fantastic anyway. T's an asshole - in or out of drag - but we put up with her for Sonny. And 'cause she's hot. Sonny ran away from home when she was sixteen. I don't even know how she did it, but she found the Kings and started crashing on T's dad's couch. She and T have been joined at the hip ever since. I don't even know if they're screwing. With them, it doesn't really matter.

Me, I got kicked out when I was fourteen and my stepmom found me making out with a girl from cheer club. My older brother snuck me money when he could, and I found a strip joint that didn't ask too many questions. After I quit stripping, I found the Kings. Tom had some kind of shitty breakup and moved to the city. She was city prosecutor. Yeah, really. She was really fucking good at it too. I met her when I was working.

No, not stripping, asshole. I was cleaning the toilets at the jail, if you had to know. I was sick of stripping and you can't get shit for jobs without even a GED. Couldn't, I guess; jobs don't matter so much now. I was lighting up just off the property line - we kept the smoker's corner there - and I saw this woman, green power suit, short hair, took your fucking breath away. I just stared at her for a while, and then I asked Diana if she knew who she was.

"DA's office," she said. "Totally out of your league."

"Fuck you," I said, 'cause I knew she was right. But I kept my eye on her, and I got to talk to her when she was working late one night.

What can I say. I'm good with my mouth.

Anyway. Back to the end of the world. Mr. T was onstage then, doing Andrej Pejic, fucking wedding dress and everything. Shit, T's the only king in the city who could pull that shit off and still look like a guy. People ask her if she's a guy or a woman when she's _out_ of drag.

You should try it sometime, it pisses her off. _Hilarious._ Don't push it too far, though, her right hook's a bitch. She damn near broke my nose once.

So T was up on stage in the dress, and the lip sync was, shit, that emo Canadian guy. Leonard Cohen. Growly, sexy. Mr. T always looks like he can't decide if he wants to beat the shit out of you or fuck you. The couple of times we've squared off, I wasn't sure if either of us knew. Sonny usually breaks it up. No one wants to piss off Sonny. Shit really goes down, she makes T look like a lightweight.

We heard a siren, and you know, Thursday night, Halloween, not that weird. But then there's another, and another, and people's phones start going off. Like not just a phone or two, all of a sudden half the place is lit up. T pulled his finger over his throat and we cut the music, and everyone tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.

"We need to close the doors and windows," Tom said, and we looked at him like he was crazy, but then everyone realized the shit's really going down, and we started dragging furniture around. We turned most of the lights out, quieted down. From what I heard later, we didn't get the worst of it; just sirens, screaming, but it came and went. We didn't figure it was the end of the world, we figured it was a rough night, maybe some riots, no big deal. We drank and hung out and tried to figure out if we should board up the windows; we finally did around two am. But you know, a couple of assholes gone crazy, not that big a deal, right? Maybe it was going on in more than one city, but the cops would take care of it. By four am it had quieted down some and we figured it'd all be over by the time the sun came up.

You don't have to tell me we were wrong. I know.

Next morning, our makeup's smudged to shit, we're all exhausted, and we still don't have any fucking idea what's really going on. And there's shit for food, because. You know. We were at a fucking bar. So most of us had peanuts and bottled water for breakfast. T had some of those Luna bars, but that shit tastes like cardboard. Sonny ate them, but Sonny'll eat anything when he's hungry enough. We got out of drag and back into our normal clothes, and there we were; fifteen drag kings, three queens and an audience. The sirens had died out by then, but by then we knew why too. Nobody was coming to calm shit down.

We thought we'd be okay, though, until around noon. Then they started trying to come in.

I don't know where T got the gun from, but she could hit a fly at fifty paces. She pretty much did, half the afternoon. By nightfall we were running out of ammo, and Molotov cocktails might light up the whole block. We figured we had to do something. We pulled a couple of groups together and went out. We got back in drag, figured it was safer. The queens needed clothes, we all needed food, and bullets sure as fuck weren't optional. I'd quit smoking by then, but T was running low and getting even pissier than usual. And if it kept getting bad, my brother's girlfriend - my brother's boyfriend's girlfriend too, technically - and some of the guys would need hormones.

"I should go out with you," Don said. "I'm supposed to look after you."

"Well, big brother," I told him. "You get that ballgown off, you can do the next supply run." Yeah, Mom kicked me out for being a dyke and my brother's a drag queen with a boyfriend _and_ a girlfriend. Nothing comes out the way you plan, right? Hotter than me, too, the bitch. Anyway.

He grinned at me. "Fine. Just don't get killed."

"Ain't happened yet, right?"

He hugged me. He's kind of a sap.

T still had two clips left, so we let her take point. The streets were scary quiet, like that time I was a Fresh Air kid and went out to a farm in the middle of nowhere, except there weren't any birds even. Just quiet and empty cars and a couple of smashed windows. Shit had gone down so fast nobody even had time to do any decent looting. Better for us, I guess, but it still freaks me out, how fast it moved, how you couldn't figure what path it would take. Little pockets of people who lived, and then streets full of bodies, and fucked if I can tell what the difference was, even now. People tried to find a reason after. One girl I knew shot herself 'cause she couldn't. I feel bad, but part of me's just pissed she wasted the bullet.

Tom found a Jeep with the keys still under the visor and we drove out to the edge of town. Empty streets, streets full of bodies, neighborhoods where people were gathered around bonfires to keep warm, to remember they were still alive. We didn't see any ragers that day after that first afternoon wave, but that was enough to keep us all spooked. We drove to the edge of town, where Tom said Homeland Security had some kind of setup, we could probably get ammo.

The power was still on out there, and a shitload of alarms went off when we started in, but anyone who had worked there was gone or dead. Tom could pick locks pretty good - he claimed he'd taken an online course, none of us asked - and we got in, filled our bags, packed up the Jeep, went back on our way like it was the kind of shit we did every day.

Of course, pretty soon it was the kind of shit we did every day. At least most of the ragers have died out now, but they took a shitload of people with them. Not all of us made it back the first time, and a couple people just went out on their own and never came back. I don't know if they were trying to be heroes or they just didn't want to deal with it any more. Probably some of both. We get religious nuts every once in a while trying to say it's our fault. Fuck those assholes, this isn't my fucking apocalypse. I know what I saw that first day, and it had shit to do with sin. We still got plenty of ammo if you want to try blaming all this on us. We all know better.

The four of us keep thinking we should move out, West maybe, but where would we go to? Everybody we know who's left is here, and you get your pick of apartments when it's the end of the world. Yeah, the power's gone, but so many people raged out we got canned shit to last for years, and Sonny and Tom wanna start a rooftop garden. Sometimes we even light candles and put on a drag show, like old times. I don't know. We do the best we can, I guess. And we got each other's backs.

Can't ask for more than that at the end of the world.


End file.
